Money, Taste, and Wine: It's Complicated!

Mike Veseth combines enology and economics in the same space. He points out the conundrums we all face walking down the wine aisle or reading down a restaurant wine list. It is complicated but this book does help you learn a bit more about yourself and why you like what you like. It also could save you buckets of money on your next trip to the wine shop.What makes a " Goats do Rome" different from a "Cote du Rhone", Mike will walk you through it. His approachable style is much less textbook and more relaxed. A perfect read going into the Christmas wine gifting season.

I'm a wine guy, not really an economics guy. But this book is written is a way thats easy for even an economics-novice can understand. Very interesting!

Very entertaining book, reads very easy, lots of good info. Gets you an insight on the world of wine. Very recommended.

A bit rambling with a weak writing style. Not worth spending any time reading this.

There are two things you might expect from a popular wine book written by an economist. It could be an  Armchair Economist  style presentation of unexpected and entertaining insights from economics about wine; or is could be a description of the economics of the wine business to help drinkers get more value for their money. This book does a little bit of each, but not very well. Mostly it's a series of essays about various aspects of the wine business, combined with some personal advice about drinking wine and other non-distilled alcoholic beverages.The main problem I had with this book is the author's wordy style, the written equivalent of a guy in love with the sound of his own voice. For example, he tells us the relation of money, taste and wine is complicated. Then he tells us again. He must have 87 ways to say it, each wordier than the last. He even feels compelled to explain what "it's complicated" means: "'It's complicated' is the short description of a type of relationship that seems to defy short descriptions. You can't reduce it to one quick word or phrase." (Minor gripe that bothers only a few logicians like me, but he contradicts himself twice in that definition). In fact, wine is no more complicated than any other international business selling an experience good, and probably less complicated than music, art or fashion. Anyway, rather than saying over and over that it's complicated, the pages could be put to better use teasing out some threads to begin to understand the complexity, or some simple approximate models to appreciate some aspects of it.My next problem is more of a disagreement than a criticism. From the outset, the author frames the problem of the relation of quality to price, although he frequently (far too frequently) points out that quality is not well-defined, and depends on personality, context and other subjective considerations. I don't think this is the issue facing most wine drinkers. You can select wines based on recommendations of wine store clerks, sommeliers, friends, ratings and popular articles; and do pretty well with little effort. Or you can devote energy to learning about wine, educating your palate, seeking out fellow enthusiasts and locating good supplies. Is the time, money and energy spent on the latter activities worth it in terms of enjoyment? Or should you instead devote the attention to music, art, football, economics, sex or anything else? The issue is not how a complete wine novice can get $50 a bottle quality for $10, but what are the costs and rewards of various levels of dedication to wine?An annoying minor issue is the author is careless with numbers, an unexpected fault in an economist. For example, "Each barrel costs $1,000 or more and holds just 30 gallons (25 cases or 300 bottles) of wine, so the cost for the oak alone adds about $3.33." The author is confusing the actual capacity of wine oak barrels, typically 225 to 300 liters, with the English wine measure called a barrel, which is 119 liters. The latter is about 30 gallons (31.44 US gallons) but it's only 119 liter wine bottles or 159 750 ml bottles. Moreover, the $1,000 is a retail price for the most expensive barrels, a vineyard would get them much more cheaply and, more important, could sell them afterwards or reuse them. My guess is that it's hard to find a bottle of wine for which the oak represents more than $1 of the production cost.If you have decided to get more serious about wine, the author has some interesting and unconventional advice for you, supported both by his knowledge of economics and his research into the wine business. This is clearly the most valuable part of the book, and for some readers it will make it worth wading through the verbiage and skewed framing. There are some common suggestions, like photographing labels of wine you taste and researching it on the Internet, keeping track of tastings and reactions, and so on. But he also has entertaining original sections on how to take advantage of dumping, why a big box store might be a better place to search for bargains than vineyards, and advocating branching out to beer and cider (personally, I would throw in sakes, non-grape wines and liqueurs as well).Unfortunately, this portion of the book is narrow. It seems to assume an upper middle class suburban American, shopping for wine in supermarkets and chain stores, whose interest is in snagging unusual and high-quality wines at low prices for sport. I have nothing against such people, and this may be the only book that addresses their hobby. But I suspect there are more people like me, whose wine experiences are shaped by foreign travel, knowledgeable advisers in urban wine stores, restaurants, trips to vineyards and visits to the homes of friends who know about wines and other drinks from different regions of the world. Wine is only a small (but important) part of these experiences. I have no doubt I could find theoretically better value for the money than the favorite wines I have chosen over the years, but stripped of any history, I wouldn't enjoy them anywhere near so much. And when I try a new wine, I want it to have more context than elbowing two other Costco shoppers out of the way to grab the last bottle in the bin (satisfying as that would no doubt be, especially if they both looked like effete wine snobs).The author knows a lot about wine and economics, and is an original thinker in both fields. There is some solid material in this book but except for a narrow group of enthusiasts it doesn't coalesce into enough interesting or useful knowledge to repay the reader for the prolix style.